Rotonde de Cartier 42 mm décor tortue

In the great tradition of artistic crafts…
 
A pioneer for more than 160 years, Cartier has always placed the artistic crafts at the very heart of its creations. For the last decade, this rich heritage has been particularly honoured by the watchmaking marvels in the Cartier Art collection. These unique watches preserve, revive and reinvent rare areas of expertise that are sometimes forgotten.
 
This year, six new creations testify to a desire to go even further, beyond the limits of an era that has passed, to project the nobility of the artistic crafts into today's world. Reinterpreting and adapting these crafts around stones, enamel, engraving and wood has given birth to a new epoch.
 
Loyal to its inherent sense of creative craftsmanship, Cartier proposes a magical menagerie that showcases this unusual union of artisanal skills and watchmaking expertise. These artistic crafts enrich and complement each other, providing new realms of creativity.
 
Whether at the Cartier Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds or in the extraordinary setting of private workshops, Cartier Art watches are brought to life in the hands of outstanding craftsmen. They are exceptional pieces imbued with a passion for craftsmanship, for limits surpassed and for challenges resolved; such perfection and beauty in workings so infinitely small are truly astounding.
 
Time no longer matters; the hands work on, producing intaglio engravings, gold cloisonné creations, stone mosaics, overlays of enamel, wood marquetry, and so on, like a poem reeled off by the tips of fingers.
 
Emotion is most certainly in the air.

Rotonde de Cartier 42 mm watch, turtle motif in stone mosaic

The term “Mosaic” was born in Rome in the first century B.C., but the first examples of tesserae mosaics date from two centuries earlier in Sicily. Replacing pebbles with little shaped cubes was a real revolution. The art of mosaic continued to evolve over time and micro-mosaics were produced from the end of the 18th century, notably in Italy.
 
It took imagination to revisit this ancient craft – historically devoted to large murals, frescoes, ceilings and floors – and it took courage to restrict it to a small area, to dare the miniature and to adapt it to watchmaking. 

A mineral turtle
This is an example of craftsmanship that requires great expertise and total control of every movement. Its precision and perfection are the result of passion and ingenuity, combined with great patience.
 
Everything starts with the search for the right stones: onyx, tiger's eye, falcon's eye, yellow pietersite, carnelian, yellow jasper, palm jasper, Kalahari jasper, yellow agate, moss agate, coral and mother-of-pearl. Then comes the choice of colours: assorted warm shades for the rounded stones, which the craftsman splits then cuts into 0.75 mm squares, 0.4 mm thick. 
 
Next the squares are positioned in a specific order according to the design, which outlines each scale of the shell and each foot in black to separate the colour and highlight the shapes. Gradually, the turtle emerges as the 1,167 tesserae are placed.
 
All the stones are fixed and then cemented to ensure an even surface. This timeless creation is a feat of accuracy executed on an infinitely small scale.
 
No less than 60 hours of work are required to position the stones alone. It is a rigorous composition that expresses the beauty, richness and extraordinary fantasy of this round dial, home to a mineral turtle.